No Way To Treat A Lady

(Darlinghurst Theatre Company)

No Way To Treat A Lady is stage musical version of the 1968 movie. It is not the most obvious subject matter to convert to the musical form.

A serial strangler, who leaves lipstick imprints on the foreheads of his female victims, develops a telephone relationship with the policeman who is searching for the murderer. The strangler is haunted by the memory of his deceased actress mother whilst the policeman, unmarried and hurtling towards middle age, himself has parental problems of the stereotypical New York Jewish mother type.

Staged here as a four hander with one actress playing all the murder victims, the deceased actress and the Jewish mother, the musical is surprisingly tuneful and entertaining. The two male performers do very nice turns with their characters. The fourth performer plays the policeman's girlfriend. All four sing well and seem to be having a good time on stage.

We had our own brush with a potential murder mystery at last night's preview performance when water leaking from a ceiling air conditioner onto electrical cabling laid out on the stage floor immediately in front of where Cs and I were seated lead to a loss of power and an interruption of about fifteen minutes during the second act. The auditorium was cleared and after some remedial work by theatre staff we returned for the resumption of the play in which all the remaining murders thankfully were confined to the stage.